-=README=-

пятница, 20 июля 2012 г.

• Including the concept planning and pre-production phase, the game has already been in development for over 4 years.
• It entered full production in January 2010, a month after FFXIII was released in Japan. Since then it has had a development team of just over 200 people.
• The director is the same person who directed FFVI, FFIX and FFXII.
• The co-director led a small part of the development team to make Tactics Ogre for the PSP in parallel with FFXV. He's currently multi-tasking as lead UI designer of FFXIV 2.0 and co-director of FFXV.
• The game design and battle system will be a major evolution of FFXII.
• The game will be open world and have sprawling, crowd-filled cities on par with Assassin's Creed.
• The battle system now allows you to target different parts of an enemy’s body like in Vagrant Story.
• Yoichi Wada (president of Square Enix) wants the game to have a world scale and volume of content that surpasses The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. He also wants the game to surpass FFVII in worldwide sales and critical reception.

One source tells Kotaku that Final Fantasy Versus XIII was officially cancelled within the last few weeks. The decision impacted morale at Square Enix and staff were reportedly saddened by the move.

Square Enix, this source added, has also decided to let Final Fantasy Versus XIII die quietly on the vine and fade away, instead of officially announcing its cancellation. This would likely be due to the fact a public acknowledgement of a Versus' cancellation could impact things like Square Enix's stock prices.

Another source tells Kotaku that, a few months back, Final Fantasy Versus XIII's development and resources had actually been folded into another game, which is to be the next numeric Final Fantasy title, Final Fantasy XV. Whether this meant actual game assets and code or simply the movement of staff was unclear. This information was independently corroborated by yet another source, though it's important to note both had learned of the "folding" prior to the more recent news of its outright cancellation.

The Final Fantasy XIII stage will be held on September 1 at 11:30. The stage is titled "Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Saga: New Developments Presentation." Square Enix is promising details on the future of the FFXIII project.